Amateur detectorists who struck gold and stole it

George Powell and Layton Davies could have walked away with a fortune when they uncovered a Viking hoard worth up to 12m. What followed was a chaotic tale of ancient history, greed and clandestine treasure, writes David James Smith

- David James Smith

On a June day in 2015, George Powell was the luckiest man alive. He had been metal-detecting in a field near Leominster in Herefordshire with his mate, Layton Davies. To put it kindly,

George has been in a lot of trouble in his life. He had amassed 22 convictions for 55 offences, such as burglary and deception. He was quite vain about his appearance. He had several elaborate, quite visible tattoos.

In one photo, he wears reflector sunglasses and an unbuttoned white shirt that reveals his tanned upper body. Layton Davies, by contrast, had been a model metal detectorist. He had almost always done the right thing. He was a school caretaker from Pontypridd. A grandfather. Perhaps his mistake was agreeing to go to Leominster with George. Layton drove, taking George in his VW Campervan on the 110-mile round trip.

We may never know why they chose that particular field. I haven’t calculated the odds, but they must be roughly something like one in a trillion. There have only ever been a handful of discoveries on the scale that George was about to make. After some hours of detecting and the usual nothing – ring pulls, bits of tractors and the like – his detector went off. Beep, Beep.

George stopped and began digging. Layton joined him. There, beneath the surface, they struck gold. Not just gold. A lot of silver, too. A 1,000-year-old hoard of Anglo-Saxon coins and jewels. It must have been a Eureka moment of some magnitude.